The schooner BRILLIANT, designed by Olin Stephens and launched by the Henry B. Nevins yard on City Island, New York, in 1932, has served as a training vessel for Mystic Seaport Museum since 1953. She has benefited from conscientious maintenance for all those years and only recently needed attention to long-monitored structural and systems concerns.
While sitting aboard the schooner BRILLIANT on a quiet Wednesday afternoon in the early summer, I finally had a chance to reflect on the major work done to the yacht the previous winter. While the teen crew was ashore with the mate, off in search of well-deserved ice cream after a long day barreling around Gardiners Bay, New York, I snuck a scone from the galley and soaked in the relative calm. With 12 people aboard, quiet is rare aboard BRILLIANT and, even at anchor, she was far from silent. But the sounds were familiar and comforting: the slap of water against the hull, the low hum of the refrigeration compressor, the 1932 Chelsea clock chiming every 30 minutes.
When the crew and mate returned to BRILLIANT in our nearly 19' Herreshoff lifeboat, AFTERGLOW, we sat down to dinner and pondered the questions we ask every day: “What was something today that was expected? What was unexpected?” Later, we gathered for navigation class and worked to solidify the charting skills we’d been developing on the fly, while on watch.